One of the things that kept my wife from going completely crazy was arranging the funeral and service, but for me, I found much of the day is still a blur, whilst other moments remain burnt in my mind for ever. Each of our footsteps echoed as we entered the somber church, each of our steps bellowed out as we past row after row filled full of friends and family, all in disbelieve that such a travesty could have happened and why that little angel was taken so soon away from our loving arms. I held that little white coffin, not wanting to let it go, not wanting to disturb his rest, My soul kept shouting out across my mind “He was just asleep”, ‘it cant be true”, “none of this is real”, “if I hold him just a bit longer, he will wake and be with us once more”. I knew I had to let him go and let him go was what needed to be done.
As the service started, I sat in a coma like state, the words just passed me by. I knew my wife, Sarah spent so many hours with others to ensure it was just perfect and perfect it was. As I carried George’s coffin back through the church, many faces of friends just merged together as I held back the tears.
George’s granddad was buried in a lovely small church graveyard, just six miles from our home, so we arrange to have George buried along side so he would be kept safe. On the morning of the burial, George’s grandma drove down to the church yard in readiness to leave her car there for after the service. this proved to be so lucky, as the grave diggers or what every they want to be called nowadays was about to start digging George’s grave, only by chance did she notice and quickly let them know, that they was about to dig in the wrong plot.
The service was so moving and little mishaps couldn’t spoil the day. The grave diggers however still got it wrong and place George at the head of the grave instead of the foot as instructed, this meant the headstone needed to be removed and was some months pasted before we could have it replaced. We never received any apology from the council for any of these errors.
As for his blanket, I gave up trying to talk to the coroner’s liaison officer and instead made it my mission to find it, I began phoning up trying to discover were it could be, my first port of call was to the police at scene, within the day they traced it and arrange to have it returned to us. The police was very helpful and let us know if ever we needed something that they would try and help us were possible. Why couldn’t the corner’s liaison officer do this simple thing? The blanket is now kept safe with us and on our darkest of dark days we are able to hold it close to our hearts.